Talking Robots: Yasuo Kuniyoshi

Posted 25 May 2007 at 08:21 UTC by mwaibel

The latest interview in the Talking Robots podcast series talks to Yasuo Kuniyoshi, the head of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems and Informatics (ISI) at the University of Tokyo. He talks about his work in embodied robot cognition and his recent advances in humanoid robots, such as constructing a robot that can pick up a human doll weighing 60kg - just 4kg less than itself. Other similar robots, such as the RI-MAN nurse robot, are still struggling with about a third of that weight. Kuniyoshi's robot is not stronger, but smarter, relying on more than 1800 sensors embedded in its synthetic skin rather than brute force to pull and lift weight.